


I Saw You (Coming Back to Me)

by DemiCas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drama, F/M, Family, Forgiveness, Gen, Grief, Loss, Nobody Wins, or lack thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 14:12:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12191463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiCas/pseuds/DemiCas
Summary: An alternate version of the Novaks' reunion in “The Rapture” (4.20), in which Jimmy is much more affected by his year as Cas' vessel than he was in canon.





	I Saw You (Coming Back to Me)

.

He came back to her broken.

 

He came back to her on a dark, sullen day in late spring, standing there on her porch in that absurd, over-sized trench coat, his shoulders stooped, his wide eyes desolate, sunken and ringed, like open wounds in his too-pale face. His mouth opened, but nothing came out, not even a breath. All he could do, it seemed, was stare at her, no expectation, no demand, no _hope_ in his thin, bleak face.

 

All she could do at first, seeing him standing there like the damn lost prodigal, was hate him.

 

A year he was gone.

 

To say that the first forty-eight hours had been the worst was not exactly a lie, but neither was it the truth; as the days and weeks dragged on the pain had become less acute, yes, but it had also gone deeper, sinking into her skin and flesh, making itself so much a part of her that extracting it would probably have killed her. She'd lived on the pain as one does air and water; it drove her on, giving her the strength to wake up, take care of Claire, badger the police, eat, sleep, do it all again.

 

Oh, yes: Claire. She might have forgiven him her own suffering, given enough time, but she could not forgive him Claire's. Grief may have given her the strength to get through each day, but Claire gave her the _reason_ , and as she watched her daughter struggle through days and nights of uncertainty and fear, her grief turned to resentment turned to anger turned to a slow, profound, pervasive rage.

 

And here he was again, after she'd built up all the scars she thought she needed, adhesions that pulled and ached only when she thought of him or caught a glimpse of him in a photo or book she'd forgotten to throw away or burn. He stood before her now like an accusation, challenging a faith she'd lost months ago.

 

“A year,” she said through her teeth.

 

He dipped his head, acknowledging her anger, his humble acquiescence like a knife twisting in her gut. “I know.” His voice was low and raw, as if he'd spent the year away from them screaming. Maybe he had. His hands clenched and unclenched feebly at his sides. “I'm sorry.”

 

“Do you know what we've been through?”

 

He shook his head, still not looking up. She wanted to see his eyes, read them like she used to, but she was afraid to demand it, afraid that what they said would take her anger and thus her purpose away. She turned her face from him. “How dare you come back now?”

 

He shuddered, his eyes closing, then opening slowly. He searched her face, his eyes bluer and darker than she remembered, like the sky at dusk before the sun was swallowed by the greedy earth; his pupils were larger than the light should allow, as if he were blind. She met those eyes only obliquely, refusing their story. “I couldn't come. Before,” he said, pleading not for forgiveness but only recognition. The words cut her like glass, tearing at her scars. “I was not . . . myself.”

 

She hugged herself, suddenly chill in the clinging warmth of the May day. “Who were you, then?” she whispered.

 

He did not answer, but stood there like a scarecrow, loose and disjointed and lost.

 

She heard a gasp behind her. She turned, blood draining from her face. “Claire! Get back upstairs!” she snapped.

 

Claire was standing in the hall, hands pressed to her mouth, then she was running, honey hair streaming behind her. “Daddy!” she cried and hurtled into him, thin arms wrapping around his body like steel bands. Or the sleeves of a strait jacket. “You're _home._ ”

 

He stood for a instant perfectly still, not even appearing to breathe. Slowly his head bowed, his shoulders bowed, and he collapsed to his knees before his daughter. He took her in his arms and buried his face in her collarbone. He wept, shoulders shaking, a fragile, brokenhearted keening the only sound now in the thick, breathless air.

 

Something in her shifted. She felt her anger draining from her. No . . . not draining, _sinking_. Sinking down below thought and feeling, ready if she ever needed it again, and leaving behind only a chill, numb clarity. She reached out her hand, gesturing. “Come inside then,” she said. “Before the neighbors see.”

______________________________________________________________________________

 

They sat in the living room with all the lights off, the space dim with an approaching storm. Jimmy had collapsed onto the sofa, clutching Claire to him as if to let go were to die. Claire was crying now, a silent stream of tears washing over her smile of welcome.

 

Amelia sat across from them, stiff and hollow. “Where have you been?”

 

_He_ had ceased weeping, had laid his cheek on top of Claire's head, eyes closed. She could not read his expression; it was too strong, too full of things she didn't want to know. He drew in a long breath, as if he'd been without air for years. “Nowhere. Everywhere.” He opened his eyes, but they were dark and said nothing to her. “I don't know.”

 

She looked out the window. “That's no answer.”

 

He shook his head in regret. “I don't have any other.”

 

She ground her teeth. This was wrong; she deserved answers. She deserved to know what sin she had committed that merited his desertion.

 

“What happened? Can you tell me that?”

 

His features twisted briefly, relaxed again into a resigned stillness. “I tried, once.”

 

“What is that supposed to mean?” She said that more sharply than she'd intended, and Claire looked up at her, eyes startled and unhappy. Amelia made her face approximate a small, motherly smile. “Claire, honey? Please go upstairs so Daddy and I can talk, okay? I'll let you know when to come back down”

 

Claire looked up at her father, brows questioning. He didn't smile, but his expression softened, became gentler than Amelia could ever remember seeing it. Ever. “It's all right,” he said. Claire nodded. She scrubbed her face and hugged his neck before running up the stairs, her one look back all for him.

 

Her stomach tightened. After everything else, was he going to take Claire away from her as well?

 

She crossed her arms, closing herself off. “What. Happened.”

 

He looked very small without Claire, as if she'd taken all the pith out of him when she left, only a dry husk, an after-image, of the man remaining. “You remember,” he said, not asking a question, “before I . . . left, what I said. What I believed.”

 

She stiffened. Had nothing changed after all? She felt the anger churning inside her again, acid burning the edges of her numbness. “Yes.”

 

He looked down at his hands, those beautiful, elegant hands knotted now in his lap, tendons corded and taut with strain. “It was all true,” he whispered. “It was all a lie, but it was all true, too.”

 

Her body jerked as she resisted the urge to jump to her feet, to lunge at him and shake him and scream at him until he gave her satisfaction. “Don't,” she choked instead. “Don't play with me. _Just tell me._ ”

 

He looked up again, spread his hands. “I don't know how. There aren't words.”

 

“ _Try._ ”

 

He was silent for a long time this time, his brow furrowed, his eyes full of unnameable things. “He took me,” he said at last. “I said 'yes' to him, and he took me.”

 

“Who?” she asked, though she knew what he would say.

 

“The angel,” he murmured. His hands twisted restlessly. “Castiel. He . . . he said he had a glorious purpose and that I was the only one who could help him. He showed me he could do wonders through me. I believed him, so I said yes, and he took me.”

 

She was clenching her hands so tightly she could feel her nails bite into her flesh. “The _angel._ ” She spat the word like a curse. “I told you then –”

 

He cut her off. “I know. Believe me or don't; it makes no difference. Whether I was insane or possessed – I was still –” He paused, breathing heavier, faster. “This last year, I was not me. I was him. That's why I didn't, _couldn't_ come back, why I never called or wrote or sent a message. I was him, I was his body, but he didn't care about you or Claire so why would he even think of contacting you?” He raised his hollow eyes to her, but she looked away, refusing to see. “I tried,” he said, the urgency in his voice the first evidence there was still any energy, any _life_ left in him. “I tried to tell him, ask him to at least tell you that we – that _I –_ was alive and safe, but he wouldn't listen.” His breath stuttered roughly. “I _tried_ , Ames, I really did.”

 

“Don't call me that,” she said, low and bitter and unforgiving.

 

He flinched at her voice, drawing even further into himself. He huddled in the shabby, too-large overcoat, pale and small against the cushions of the couch. _Their_ couch. In _their_ living room, in _their_ home, which he had abandoned so many months ago. In the distance a flash of lightning split the sky, the thunder growling behind by only a handful of seconds. A heavy, desultory rain began to fall, and some part of her wondered absently if Claire had brought her bicycle into the garage.

 

“Why are you here, Jimmy?” she asked at last, breaking the silence that vibrated between them like a plucked bowstring.

 

“I got free,” he said. “There was a – no, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what happened, just that he left, and I got away. I don't – I don't know if he's alive or dead or if he'll come after me again, but I got away. I came home.”

 

She watched the rain crawl down the windows, fat, viscous drops, like oil. “ _Is_ this home?” she asked.

 

He made a noise in his throat then, one she had never heard before: a sound of pain and loss so desolate it almost didn't sound human. “Please,” he whispered.

 

She turned to look at him, and she suddenly felt as if she were seeing him from a great distance, and she wondered if she could puzzle out, just by looking long and hard enough, what he meant by returning to her in this way. He had wrapped his arms around himself and was shaking, his face screwed up in an agony of hope and fear. He was broken, defenseless, waiting for either redemption or damnation, gifts, she realized now, only she could give him. She took in a slow breath, and something clear and strong and vast opened inside her.

 

She did not smile, but she held out her hand, palm up. A sign or a promise. “Will you go back to the doctor?” she asked softly.

 

His expression shifted, emotions she couldn't read flickering through it. “Yes,” he said roughly.

 

“Will you do what he says?”

 

He dropped his shoulders and looked at the floor. “Anything.”

 

She felt as if her heart broke open with that word, and triumph filled her, heady and perfect. He had returned to her; she had won. He would surrender his heroic delusion to her reality, and she would forgive him, and everything would be the way it was before. She smiled at last. “Then –” she began.

 

They were interrupted by a noise in the hall. Their heads swung in unison towards the sound.

 

“Claire,” she said sternly, “I asked you to stay upstairs.”

 

Claire did not look at her but at him. “I am not Claire,” Claire said, her voice and face perfectly expressionless.

 

Amelia felt a sliver of disquiet run up her spine at her daughter's tone, but Jimmy's eyes went round with horror. “No!” he choked. “You can't!”

 

Claire's features softened. “I'm sorry, Jimmy,” she said gently, “but our work is not yet done.”

 

“How could you take her?” he cried, starting to his feet. “How do you _dare_?”

 

Claire stepped into the room, and Amelia was struck by the purpose and strength of her movements, as if she were so much older than her twelve short years. She stopped in front of her father and laid a hand on his chest. Jimmy gaped and collapsed backwards into the cushions.“I explained things to her,” she said. “I told her my mission, how important it was. She understood.” She stooped a little, then, leaning down to capture his gaze. He looked wild, like a man who had run out of places to hide.

 

“She is brave, your daughter,” Claire continued, “and she is of the blood, but she is not strong enough for me. Not yet. She will burn out too soon.” She reached forward and squeezed his shoulder. “I need you, Jimmy. I need you to let me back in.”

 

He doubled over, clutching his head. His voice, though low, was full of tears and silent howling. “I can't,” he moaned. “I can't do it again.”

 

Amelia sat watching this absurd vignette unfold before her without the slightest idea of its meaning. Each individual word was in English, but together they made no sense. Irritated by her confusion, she took refuge in motherhood. “Claire,” she said sharply. “What are you talking about?”

 

Claire turned bright eyes on her mother. They seemed almost luminous in the storm-dark air. “I am not Claire,” she repeated shortly, as if Amelia were a slow child she was tired of correcting. “I am Castiel. I am here for Jimmy.” She turned away again, dismissive.

 

He was sobbing on the couch, face in his hands. “You did this,” he grated, his voice shattered. “You did this so I would say yes. Damn you. Damn you!”

 

“I understand your distress, Jimmy. I have learned much in the year we've been together. I understand now the love you have for your daughter and your wife; I understand that it is difficult for you to leave them.” Claire's voice was soothing, almost tender. “Please know that I regret having to do this.”

 

“Then don't! Leave me alone!” Jimmy cried, raw and naked in his pain. “Leave my family alone!”

 

Claire cocked her head to one side, like a robin listening. “I cannot,” she replied. “This is larger than you, or Claire, larger than one small family in one small town in Michigan. This is the End of Days, Jimmy. The Apocalypse is coming, and I cannot fulfill my mission without you.”

 

Amelia's head was still spinning, but the words began to fall into a sort of order, meaning attaching to them like dew on grass seeds. _Castiel, End of Days, Apocalypse_. This was all his madness again, the madness he said he would leave behind, and this time he'd drawn Claire into it, damn him. She stood. “Claire. Stop this nonsense at once. Don't you see you're upsetting your father? Now go upstairs until I call you, young lady.”

 

Claire turned as if surprised, as if her mother was an unexpected talking dog, and then her lips pressed together, her brows lowering in an alien frown. “Why do you not listen? I am not Claire. I am _Castiel_ , and I am not speaking to you. Now, please be silent.”

 

Amelia froze, words fleeing her in the face of this flat rejection. What had he _done_?

 

Claire turned back to her father. “It is time, Jimmy.”

 

He wrung his hands. “Not even a day? A few hours?”

 

Claire gazed at him sadly, and her face looked suddenly, terrifyingly _old_. “Would that really help?” she asked.

 

“No,” he whispered, “you're right. It would be worse. Just – just let me say goodbye.”

 

Claire inclined her head, a god granting a devotee a boon. Jimmy lurched to his feet unsteadily.

 

He took a step forward. “Ames . . .” he began.

 

She did not move to meet him. She found she was trembling. His eyes were bright with tears and so full of grief she could not look at them.

 

“What are you doing, Jimmy?” she asked, knowing but not knowing. She felt as if her heart were turning to ice in her chest.

 

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. “I have to leave again. I don't know for how long.”

 

She had been close, so close. He had come back. He had said yes to the doctor. Anything _,_ he'd said. She breathed slowly through her nose. So. Apparently not _any_ thing _._

 

The words left her slowly and deliberately, like soldiers marching against hopeless odds. “If you leave now, don't ever come back.”

 

His face crumbled. His lips parted, a silent, breathless scream.

 

She looked away, at Claire, who stood a little apart, contemplating both of them dispassionately, as if they were a riddle she didn't understand. “You broke my heart once,” she said, looking at her daughter but speaking to him. “You nearly broke my soul. I can't let you do it again.”

 

“It's either me or Claire,” Jimmy whispered. He was trying to explain, though his voice held no hope that she would understand. “I can't let him take _Claire_.”

 

“ _Enough!_ ” She turned on him, cold and bloodless in her rage. “It was bad enough when it was just you, but now you bring Claire into it? How _dare_ you?”

 

“But it's true!” He whirled on Claire, frantic, desperate. “Tell her, Castiel! Show her!”

 

Claire gave her father the another sad look, nodded. She turned to her mother. “Prepare yourself,” she said.

 

Amelia's mouth dropped open, to say – what, she didn't know, but her voice died before it could be born.

 

Claire was _glowing._

 

Subtle at first, Amelia thought it was a trick of the storm light, but it grew, gold and blue and other colors she didn't have names for. Claire's face was still and calm, but it was not the calm of a twelve-year-old girl, not the calm of anything human at all, but strong and poised and so _other_ that Amelia felt her mind shy away from the very idea of it. As the nimbus grew, the atmosphere of the room became tight and oppressive, as if something vast had displaced all the air in it, leaving not enough to breathe. Amelia gasped, panicking.

 

Lightning flashed then, painful and sudden, and the image of huge black wings cut across her vision, burned against the back wall in razor-sharp shadows. The _angel._

 

She dropped to her knees and hid her face in her hands. A brittle, involuntary whine crawled up the back of her throat as she cowered before the thing inside Claire. “Don't!” she gasped. “No . . .”

 

The air shifted, became soft and breathable again. Claire's voice reached out to her. “As you can see, Jimmy speaks the truth. He has been vessel to an angel, and now he is needed again.”

 

She looked up. The wings, the light, were gone. Claire's face was looking down on her with detached sympathy. “I – I don't understand . . .” Amelia stuttered. “Why Jimmy? He's been gone so long. We need him. Can't you choose someone else?”

 

“Jimmy is of the blood,” Claire's mouth said. “There are few who can sustain me for long without being consumed; Jimmy is the best and most expedient container for my Grace. If I were to release him without finding a substitute vessel, I would be unable to fulfill my purpose, which could, potentially, doom millions of humans to suffering and death.”

 

Hope flickered. “Potentially?”

 

Claire's head inclined in acquiescence. “I cannot claim to be . . . indispensable, but I have been given my task by Heaven, and I fear that if I stray from it the results would be disastrous. Too many lives are at stake; I dare not risk them. I _will_ not risk them.”

 

Amelia looked at her husband, hoping that he would contradict this wild tale, but she saw only resignation in his eyes, a fatal acceptance. _He_ at least, believed.

 

Jimmy shuddered, fidgeting in his place as if he dared not come closer. “Ames?”

 

She broke then and stumbled forward, blindly, into his arms. He groaned and clung to her like a man drowning, his arms tight and trembling. She buried her face in his shoulder; he kissed her head, her brow, again and again and again. “Ames, Ames, Ames,” he whispered brokenly. “God, I love you. I love you so much.”

 

She had no voice. She could not blame him or plead with him or tell him how much she'd missed him or hated him or loved him. Her heart, her throat – her whole _being –_ seemed constricted, too small for what she felt in this moment. So she simply held on, hoping her body, pressed into his, could say all that she could not.

 

“Time is short,” came Claire's voice at last. “Even now the enemy may be tracking us. Jimmy, come.” The last words were spoken with a sharpness and authority that Amelia felt so deep inside herself that she obeyed it was well, jerking her head up without thinking. Jimmy groaned again and pulled away from her slowly, reluctantly, as if he were tearing off a piece of his own flesh.

 

At last he stood before the thing in Claire's body, head bowed. Beaten. Defeated. “I'm ready,” he said, barely audible.

 

He looked at Amelia then, and he was so terrible and beautiful in his surrender that she felt as if she had been struck blind, that she would never see anything again but those depthless blue eyes gazing at her with despair and grief.

 

“Yes,” he said.

 

Claire's body went rigid, her head thrown back. Blue light and gold poured from her mouth and eyes, twisting and flowing into his. He cried out when the stream hit him, his body stiffening likewise, then all was silent but for the hum of unimaginable energies, more felt than heard, passing between the bodies of daughter and father.

 

It seemed to last forever. It was over in seconds.

 

Claire collapsed with a tiny whimper onto the carpet. Amelia had barely wit enough to drop and take her in her arms, her eyes still locked on Jimmy's face.

 

It had changed, that face, had gone from grief-stricken and frantic to coldly serene, and that change, more than Jimmy's wild story or Claire's odd behavior, more than the light and the wings, was what finally drove the truth into Amelia, settling into her flesh like thorns. Jimmy was gone. The thing that stood looking down at her with pity – the kind of pity one might bestow on an insect one had accidentally crushed – was something else, something other, and she would never truly know what it was or why it had destroyed her life.

 

“Will I ever see him again?” she asked dully.

 

The thing bowed Jimmy's head. “I do not know,” it said. Its voice was different, too – low, rough, like glass and glue. “When . . . when this is all over, I will try to return him to you, but there are so many dangers . . .” It sighed. “I can't promise anything.”

 

She was numb. She was dead. Even with the living weight of Claire in her arms, she was dead. “Of course not,” she said, not knowing how the words made it past her icy lips. “I understand.”

 

The thing shifted the muscles on Jimmy's face; it looked relieved, perhaps. “I must go now,” it said. “We have stayed too long already; we have put you and the child in danger with our presence.” It moved as if to – what? Fly?

 

“Wait, Castiel,” she said, tasting that name for the first time, maybe the last time. It tasted like ashes and rage.

 

The thing moved Jimmy's eyebrows upwards. “Yes?”

 

She was cold, so cold now, but her face was dry; the dead did not weep. She gazed for the last time into those stolen blue eyes, and already her memory of Jimmy was fading.

 

“Go to hell.”

 

She had the satisfaction of seeing the thing flinch before it disappeared in a roar of wings.

 

It was over. He'd come back, and she'd faced him, faced what he'd done to her and Claire and found the answers to her pain and rage. They were not the answers she wanted – they were knives and nails driven into her without thought or mercy – but they _were_ answers, and as such she found them unexpectedly liberating. She realized now, with a shock like an electrical current, that she was finally _free_ of him, free of the pain of expectation and the constant drag of an equivocal future. The past laid, the future collapsing, there was only peace, dry and inadequate though it might be.

 

Claire stirred against her. “M-mom?” she asked weakly. “Where's Daddy?”

 

The future narrowed down to a thread, to a point; it was such a relief not to have to worry or think or hurt anymore. “He's dead, sweetheart,” Amelia replied, smiling. “The angel killed him, and he's never coming back.”

 

Claire began to cry again, but Amelia shushed her gently, stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. “Don't cry, honey,” she murmured. “It's okay. Mommy's dead, too.”

 


End file.
